Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Chef components.. Maybe Im not getting it?
Grozzer
Dsabre wrote:
before this degrades into a flame fest...let me add this:
chef BE relations haven't been good since before the chef revamp...
amongst the things being argued about are:
1) BE's being used as "schematic monkeys"
2) price of tissues
3) BE alts-this is the one i hate the most.
4) price of resources
5) profit margins
6) chef attitudes
#4 chefs are not the only ones/worst ones driving up meat prices. docs paying huge sums for herbivore/avian meat can have a huge impact on the price hunters expect to be paid for harvesting ANY kind of meat...even dath carnivore meat which is the only realistic type of meat to use in chef tissues due to the quantities needed. armorsmiths also have an impact with their willingness to fork over equally huge sums for wooly hide...and many even throw in incentives like free suits of armor/etc.
True, though i've found that if you can find a few gung-ho hunters to harvest for you most any type of meat can be gathered in a fair amount- a doctor friend of mine managed to gather 1.3million units of dantoinian carni meat in a recent, large hunt.
#5 well this is a rather touchy one...and probably the one that generates the most amount of friction. so I'll go into this one a bit more.
chefs do not always price things according to resource costs...many of them (especially ones in high traffic locations) price their food/drink at a "balance" price...
what I mean by "balance" is that they price at a point where the vendor stays stocked almost all the time, but still generates a good deal of sales.
If you're bound by keeping a chef's schedule this isn't an issue(in the same way), however when you open a public shop and are no longer working exclusively you can basically do the same thing.
BE's due to the expectations of suppliers of subcomponents are expected to charge a price based on their costs...while end product producers (chefs, ws's, as's, doc's, etc.) are expected to price based on quality and availability. if it doesn't seem fair...well thats probably true...but it is unfortunately the way things generally are.
the thing that gets to me isn't so much the basing price off of cost as much as the attitudes some chefs come to the table with as having a BE be their "supplier" and nothing else-which is where things start to degrade and get unpleasant. When they see a BE as just being a supplier and expect things to be based on cost, what generally becomes is almost cruel treatment. (also #6)
#6 chef attitudes are not server specific...they are however chef specific. some chefs are nice, some are profit mongers, some care less about price and more about keeping a stocked vendor...some only care about the price. please do not treat all chefs as if they are all the same as if they are same as the inconsiderate chef who demanded a schematic from you.
agreed- i've worked w/ both sides of the coin, though i feel i'musuallyable to pick out the bad apples in time and if i get any sort of sour attatude towards me i don't find it above me to tell them that they can go somewhere else, "i don't have the time", "i already can't keep up with demand" etc.- whatever it takes to get them off my back. I think leaving the obviously BE titles down helps too.
MBE/Sentinel
chef BE relations haven't been good since before the chef revamp...
amongst the things being argued about are:
1) BE's being used as "schematic monkeys"
2) price of tissues
3) BE alts
4) price of resources
5) profit margins
6) chef attitudes
of the 5...I am quite sure that with the exception of #3 and #6...all are server specific.
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short summary of the below in case you don't want to read it all:
-do not apply what you are seeing on your server and think the same thing is happening on all servers
-each server is unique in its inflated economy, resource availability, and player mentality
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#1 is directly related to the number of BE's willing/able to create chef tissues in sufficient quantities (i.e. full 40 crate runs...and just for the sake of putting down a number...5-15 runs per week per chef)
#2 is completely dependent on the current situation of the resource market...if meat costs 200 cpu...well that obviously affects the prices...as does high costs for the flora.
#3 well nothing much anyone can do about this one, so its rather pointless to get completely worked up and start flaming others over something that will likely never change....ever...it would be better to focus on things that can be changed...and when those are done...then proceed to get upset over the ones that can't be changed.
#4 chefs are not the only ones/worst ones driving up meat prices. docs paying huge sums for herbivore/avian meat can have a huge impact on the price hunters expect to be paid for harvesting ANY kind of meat...even dath carnivore meat which is the only realistic type of meat to use in chef tissues due to the quantities needed. armorsmiths also have an impact with their willingness to fork over equally huge sums for wooly hide...and many even throw in incentives like free suits of armor/etc.
#5 well this is a rather touchy one...and probably the one that generates the most amount of friction. so I'll go into this one a bit more.
chefs do not always price things according to resource costs...many of them (especially ones in high traffic locations) price their food/drink at a "balance" price...
what I mean by "balance" is that they price at a point where the vendor stays stocked almost all the time, but still generates a good deal of sales.
BE's due to the expectations of suppliers of subcomponents are expected to charge a price based on their costs...while end product producers (chefs, ws's, as's, doc's, etc.) are expected to price based on quality and availability. if it doesn't seem fair...well thats probably true...but it is unfortunately the way things generally are.
another key thing to keep in mind is that the chef "grind" doesn't technically end until the chef picks up their 12 pts...with the abundance of 12 point chefs on many servers...12 points isn't really an option for chef that want to compete...and CA's are expensive. and when someone invests 20 mil + (not including resource costs) they will expect to make that back...and will likely want to do so as quickly as possible (I only include this because it does affect the player mentality when pricing items).
#6 chef attitudes are not server specific...they are however chef specific. some chefs are nice, some are profit mongers, some care less about price and more about keeping a stocked vendor...some only care about the price. please do not treat all chefs as if they are all the same as if they are same as the inconsiderate chef who demanded a schematic from you.
BE's are in the unique position where there are normally (probably always) more chefs than BE's...take a little time to figure out if you want to work with a chef (i.e. do they treat you like a schematic monkey, or do they value your service) and if you don't like their attitude, or practices...then stop working with them.
and keep in mind that as demanding as chefs can be...no one likes to be held hostage to someone else's time table...BE's don't like chefs forcing them to produce what they want, when they want...but at the same time chefs don't like to be unable to make things because they don't have the BE tissues.
dyck wrote:
Ok I feel as a chef Im going to have to stick my neck out on this one, feel free to take a swing at it.
Since I have been a chef I have never been able to secure a steady flow of be tissues. I get the odd run of tissues, the odd schematic prepared but never anything that lasts more than a few weeks. Tissues were and still are never available publicly in bulk or quality.Now I know that it isnt easy to supply 5 chefs at a time, butyou guys canthave it all.My typical conversation is as follows:
Chef: Hello, do you sellBSN or INN tissues by any chance?
BE #1: not to you, I have enough work to do. /addignore annoyingChef
BE #2:I'd love to but Idont have the xxx/yyyand cant provide as much as you want
Chef:Alright, so if you cant provide me with what I need, would you be interrested in making a few schematics for me so I can stay in business?
9 out of 10 BE: NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!! This will kill the bioengineer economy, even though we are severely in demand on every server in the galaxy and fully overworked. I will never sell my skills for 3 minutes work even for a very nice price. I am no one's schematic monkey!!!
Chef: Ok, looks like I wont be cooking this week, my customers will have to go hungry.
So if you cant meet the demand, and you refuse to provide schematics, and you dont want me to get a bioeng alt so I can stay in business, what exactly do you guys propose? Im all ears here.
Want my oversimplified opinion on the matter? Sell your skills for a fair price, that or step up and make more tissues.
(granted Im out of INNs, but more are in production infactories)Lloyd Pickering
Master Bio-Engineer
Chimaera
6276, 1923 Sapphire Lake, Naboo
Lloyd Pickering
Master Bio-Engineer
Chimaera
6276, 1923 Sapphire Lake, Naboo
dyck wrote:
Ok I feel as a chef Im going to have to stick my neck out on this one, feel free to take a swing at it.
...
Want my oversimplified opinion on the matter? Sell your skills for a fair price, that or step up and make more tissues.
I'm glad you did stick your neck out. Perspectives are always good. In fact, I'll give you five stars for doing so, since I think dialogue is healthy and since your post is good dialogue and not just a rant. However, I'm one of those BE's who won't sell schematics (but I'll GIVE away a schematic to a close friend or guildmate), and who can't step up the manufacture.
I too see the selling of schematics as unethical. Hologrinder selling of schematics killed the BE market several months back to the extent that the profession never recovered. There is no protection for the BE against anyone using a BE schematic. The "fair price" is all a matter of perspective, and whether you are comparing to the amount of work involved to make the schematic, the amount of work it took to make master BE, or the amount of money one would make from selling the tissues themselves.
The biggest problem is that tissues require huge amounts of meat. The BE skill tree is rather SP intensive, and several additional abilities are required to be an effective BE, so very few BE's are very high in a combat tree. Chefs and BE's often compete for the same meat, but since chefs typically have more money than BE's and deal with a product that is consumed by anyone, it is less of a problem for them if the price of meat is driven up. On my server, meat prices can go over 100 cpu. That means the meat alone in a single unit of micronutrient supplement would be 2K at that price, or 50K per crate. Since I sell my MNS at 25K per crate, I clearly can't pay that price for meat.
Gorath has had a good meat shortage for quite some time. A brief spawn of fair meat occurred on Dathomir recently, but NO meat appeared on the bazaar at less than 50 cpu. I collected as much as I could, but it was gone in a flash.
It takes 20K of meat (plus a little for making schematics) in addition to flora for a single factory run. If you really would like to help, offer to help the BE obtain the meat. BE is not a so-called crafting profession, so we don't get vendors of our own. Offer to use your vendor to buy meat for your local BE. To get the quality you want, you will need decent OQ/PE/Flavor at 50%/30%/20% according to posts on this forum (although the crafting window still says 33% each, so this has to be tested from time to time.) You will also need flora at >900 in all three stats.
When the Chef revamp occurred, I had a chef friend who did just that. We had a great partnership, and we both made some money, although he made about 3 times what I did. Later, he discovered the grinders were selling schematics at 50K a pop, and he dumped me to increase his profits by 30%. Shortly after that, BE's started disappearing like passenger pigeons.
Actually, in a way, I feel like Netscape must have felt in the face of Microsoft. The Chefs cornered the meat market, then demanded that I make schematics because I couldn't get enough meat to supply them. And so, perhaps it is just my own personal stubborness that causes me to refuse to be bullied by them.
Greed created the current situation. Generosity might possibly reverse it. Let me offer a scenario that is currently working.
My current dominant Chef customer is a guildmate. I GIVE him the tissues, and he pays me whatever he feels like after he sells his product. In turn, he goes hunting for me sometimes (his alt is a rifleman), and keeps other guildies supplied with Veghash, Vagnerian Canape, and Vaserian Brandy. The other guildies also collect meat when they hunt. I also supply them with pets. I do get the short end of the stick here, but we have a lot of fun together actually playing the game, and I'm not sure where it actually balances out. Another guildie has given me one of her vendors, which I can never keep stocked. Another surveys for me for flora. Another guildie gives us free buffs and resurrects whenever we are hunting or whenever I collect DNA. In turn, she gets free Bivoli from the chef. So I'm not rich, but I am having fun, which is why I bought the game in the first place. Now if only we had a guildie with lots of lot spaces...
You are barking up the wrong tree. Look, here is the reality dyck: a "powergaming chef" with a high throughput needs a "powergaming additive-making BE" with a similar throughput. But why on Gawd's green earth would a BE do such a thing? That would be a very silly thing to do, particularly with chef attitudes being like they are.
No, the reality is that those BE's that have an interest in becoming such a "powergaming additive-making BE" inevitably do that for a while, them become a chef themselves. May as well right? I've known quite a few BE's who have done just that. It just makes no sense for a BE to satisfy themselves in being a "low paid, unappreciated, high volume additive slave"because the processof making additives, and the process of making food is nearly identical. Chefs lement the lack of such people, but unless things change a whole lot, the "powergaming, additive-making BE" will remain on the endangered species list, and trading schematics only makes that worse.
So in general those who remain as BE's and are not chefs, are the very ones that have no interest in running such a "high volume"operation. Many of us dabble in additive making, and may even be able to supply a few of the "non-powergaming chefs" should we chose to, but even that is a very tough sell these days because of prices and because of attitudes.
dyck wrote:
So if you cant meet the demand, and you refuse to provide schematics, and you dont want me to get a bioeng alt so I can stay in business, what exactly do you guys propose? Im all ears here.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 11-30-2004 11:21 AM
LloydPickering wrote:
Well from my point of view I can meet demand. Chefs either expect me to make schematics, or lower my prices to impractical amounts for ordering regularly. As we speak, I have 2 runs of +56/57 MSN and 5 runs of +87BSN on my vendors for very reasonable prices. I also have enough resources to keep my 4 factories going for a few months
Chef Suit +21 Experimentation
This suit is up for sale for 2 days only. +21 experimentation crafting suit.
Sale is for 25 million credits flat price, a 12 point chef can easily make that back in a week or two.
I don't know how true that is, and I definitely don't mean to call chefs greedy or anything. Though I am surprised to see how lucrative it is compared to the couple K made off a complete factory run of additives. Something to keep in mind on both sides.Lloyd Pickering
Master Bio-Engineer
Chimaera
6276, 1923 Sapphire Lake, Naboo
Ykai wrote:
*snip
In closing, unless the BE community and CHef communitty agree completely on a bare-bones price for addatives, this will never go away. Since there is always one or two who won't follow the agreement, it will never happen. I for one hope it had a chance, but allas, not in this day and age and game.
This issuewill never go away. I read a couple of posts addressing credits and the differing profit margins between chef and bio-engineer. Although I agree the amount of money floating around in the game is insane, the issue really isn't about money at all. It's about how much fun is obtained from undertaking an in-game task.
An example; I spent three days riding around Naboo collecting enough eggs to make enhanced myoflex. The task was tedious and incredibly boring. By the end of the three days I'd thought I'd undergone a frontal lobotomy. Giving my cat a bubble bath would have been more fun. After two failed attempts at making a schematic it was all I could do to not click the cancel account button. In general the fun level was non-existant and I will not be undertaking that in-game task again.
Apply this mindset to chef tissues. I can go out into the wild with my rudimetary combat skills and after a few days have enough meat to make a full run of tissues. The task is repeatitive and time consuming. Now add 3+ days of factory time and by the end of the week I have a full run of tissues. This makes my chef customer happy for about a day. So in the meantime I'm back out blamming critters over and over and over again. Now you're advice is a "bare-bones" price for additives? Again, I fail to see the fun there.
I could purchase the meat and save myself time but I'd be selling at cost or at a loss. That leaves me very little money to buy a spaceship so I can do those new fun things everyone loves doing now. Again, not much fun.
Bio-engineers stop making tissues mainly because it isn't a lot of fun and there is no profit to compensate for that fact. Chefs end up purchasing alts and creating bio-engineers of their own. You can rely on SOE to do NOTHING to change the Chef/BE paradigm. Why? Because people are purchasing game boxes and paying more monthly fees. That's real money, not the monopoly money we're arguing over. 
I play to have fun. I believe I found the SWG box in the "video game" section of the store not the "create your own home business" section. With that in mind you'll find me crawling across Dathomir trying to stab a rancor in the bahooty with a big needle. Now that's entertainment. 
Spazzers wrote:
I play to have fun. I believe I found the SWG box in the "video game" section of the store not the "create your own home business" section. With that in mind you'll find me crawling across Dathomir trying to stab a rancor in the bahooty with a big needle. Now that's entertainment.